Nine days after Oakland’s Jabari Brown left the program, Oregon lost another freshman guard when Bruce Barron defected.

Coach Dana Altman was in no mood to discuss the situation at length: “We’ll move forward with the 13 players we have on the team. I’m not going to talk anymore about guys not on the team. We’ll just move on from here.”

Update: Word from Eugene is the two guys are buddies and may be looking to sign elsewhere as a “package deal.”

Elsewhere, the Pac-10 won two of three and is 8-1 for the week . . .

— USC 56, UC Riverside 35: The Trojans (4-4) got 11 points from Greg Allen and beat a UCR team with a win over Washington State. USC held the Highlanders to 11 second-half points.

— Creighton 85, San Diego State 83: The Aztecs (7-2), who host Cal on Sunday, lost at home to the Bluejays (6-0), despite 21 points from point guard Xavier Thames, a sophomore transfer from Washington State.

USC’s much-hyped 7-foot sophomore Dewayne Dedmon will be out as long as 4 to 6 weeks after sustaining a stress fracture to his foot, the athletic department reports. Dedmon is wearing a walking boot and will be re-evaluated on a weekly basis.

USC coach Kevin O’Neill has said Dedmon, who did not begin playing basketball until he was 18, has more athletic ability than any big man he has ever seen. And that includes the NBA, where O’Neill has coached.

USC plays at Cal in the Pac-12 opener on Dec. 29 — four weeks and a day from now — meaning his availability for that game is up for grabs. Here’s more from the L.A. Times.

Meanwhile, after going 10-16 last week, the Pac-12 is 6-0 so far this week . . .

— Oregon 64, UTEP 59: Sophomore Johnathan Loyd shot 6 for 7 from the 3-point arc and scored a career-high 24 points, leading the Ducks (4-1) to victory at Eugene, Ore. The Ducks won on a night that leading scorers Garrett Sim and E.J. Singler combined to shoot 2 for 12.

FINAL SCORE: Cal 73, McNeese State 57. Closest home game yet — 16 points. Bears improve to 6-1 overall, 5-0 at Haas Pavilion. Gutierrez finishes with 26 points, six rebounds and five assists. Crabbe scores 20 and Kamp 10. Richard Solomon had 10 rebounds. Bears put their No. 24 ranking to the test on Sunday at San Diego State (7-1), which already owns wins over Arizona and USC.

Ten days after leaving Oregon just two games into his freshman season, former Oakland prep star Jabari Brown remained absent from practice Monday. Bob Clark of the Register-Guard in Eugene is reporting it now seems unlikely he will return.

Neither Brown nor his family has commented publicly on the reasons for his deaprture or his future plans, and Oregon coach Dana Altman said he hasn’t spoken to Brown in more than a week.

“It’s been a long time so I’m sure he’s moved on and we’ve got to move on,” Altman said. “Any time you lose anybody it’s disappointing … I would be just as disappointed if anybody on the team left. We don’t want to lose anybody.”

Altman said his “assumption” is that Brown will complete the fall term at Oregon, with classes ending this week followed by final examinations.

Meanwhile . . .

— UCLA 62, Pepperdine 39: The Bruins (2-4) scored their first victory of the season over a D-I opponent, thrashing the Waves. Guard Lazeric Jones had 14 points to lead the Bruins. Center Joshua Smith had four points and three fouls in 12 minutes and junior forward Reeves Nelson came off the bench, contributing just two points and two rebounds in 10 minutes.

— Colorado 70, Georgia 68: Sophomore wing Andre Roberson had 15 points and 15 rebounds for his third double-double of the season and Askia Booker added 14 points off the bench for the Buffs (4-2). Georgia, 4-0 when it lost to Cal, dropped its third straight.

It’s a good day for Cal linebacker Mychal Kendricks, who was named the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year. Receiver Keenan Allen, left tackle Mitchell Schwartz and punter Bryan Anger also earned first-team honors, and defensive end Trevor Guyton was second-team. Stanford QB Andrew Luck was the Offensive Player of the Year and Stanford coach David Shaw was Coach of the Year.

McNeese State pays a visit to Haas Pavilion on Monday night, and the outcome shouldn’t be much different than Saturday, when the Bears breezed past Denver. The teams and their styles will be different, but don’t expect the Cowboys to provide the Bears much more of a challenge than the Pioneers did in an 80-59 Cal win.

This is about the Bears continuing to hone what they do and preparing for their next real test: Sunday at San Diego State.

The Aztecs won’t trot out the kind of talent and quickness Cal saw in its 39-point loss to Missouri, but they are a high-level team with a 7-1 record. Also looming larger on the nonconference docket is a Dec. 23 matchup at UNLV, which is unbeaten and coming off a 10-point win over No. 1 North Carolina.

There are some serious games remaining on the Bears’ preconference schedule, and that’s a good thing. Much of the Pac-12 will fatten up in December on schedules that will not challenge them much. Coach Mike Montgomery and his Bears will have a pretty good idea how they measure up by their Dec. 29 conference opener vs. USC.

The Bears patched up their psyche a bit at the expense of Denver, and are feeling better about themselves a week after the loss to Mizzou.

It was a forgettable week for the conference, which went 10-16 since last Monday, including UCLA’s win over Division II Chaminade. Pac-12 teams were 0-4 record against Top-25 opponents, three of those defeats by 16 points or more.

— UC Riverside 64, Washington State 63: The Highlanders (2-4), whose only previous victory was over Cal Lutheran, topped the Cougars (2-4) in the seventh-place game of the 76 Classic in Anaheim. It was just the third win for UCR in 27 tries against current Pac-12 members. Brock Motum had 15 points and Faisal Aden 14 for WSU.

— DePaul 68, Arizona State 64: The Blue Demons forced 19 turnovers and beat the Sun Devils (2-4) in the fifth-place game of the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, Fla. Keala King had 22 points to lead ASU and Trent Lockett added 19 points and 12 rebounds.